2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



1. Your Documentation is TOO LONG! Gimme a Quick Start!!!
1. Your Documentation is TOO LONG! Gimme a Quick Start!!!

Ok, ok... All you _really_ need to do to use 2ZIP is to copy the
2ZIP.EXE file into one of the directories in your DOS path (or in
the directory that contains your archives), and go to Section 8 to
see how to use it. If you encounter a problem, please read the
rest of the documentation and (if that doesn't work) give me a
call.

2. 2ZIP What does it do?
2. 2ZIP What does it do?

2ZIP allows you to convert files archived in several other
compression methods to the new PKZIP format. Formats currently
supported are ARC, PAK, DWC, LHARC, and ZOO.

3. 2ZIP Disclaimer
3. 2ZIP Disclaimer

2ZIP is provided "as-is". I make no claim that it is suitable for
any particular purpose. It may, in fact, not work at all. I've
had some pretty good luck with it, but you might not.

2ZIP is written in Microsoft C 5.1 (and developed using Quick C
2.0). I've tried to limit my usage of special MS-DOS tricks (like
version-dependent features, etc.) to ensure that this version of
2ZIP will work on all MS-DOS compatible computers (Version 3.1 and
above).

4. 2ZIP Credits
4. 2ZIP Credits

Many and big thanks to the folks who helped me test 2ZIP. Among
them: Paul Waldinger @ Sound of Music PCBoard, Phil Brushaber @
The Ad Game BBS, John Souvestre, and Mark Stein @ The Laguna Hills
BBS. Many thanks to these folks.

5. 2ZIP Payment
5. 2ZIP Payment

2ZIP is free for non-commercial use. If you're a private citizen
and you've downloaded 2ZIP, enjoy! I've written this program for
you. It should make your archive conversion as painless as
possible.

For commercial use, though, (or use in a business setting) I
require a small fee of $10/site, or $100 for unlimited usage within
your organization for 2ZIP. Contact me at the address or phone
number listed at the bottom of this document for more information.

For non-commerical users, I'm offering this program as a service to
promote what I believe is a superior compression program
(PKZIP/PKUNZIP). I would certainly appreciate your comments on
2ZIP, and I would probably be willing to add an enhancement or two
if it's needed, (and if you say I'm a nice guy for doing it).


2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



In any case, drop me a line! I try to return all mail (I've really
gotten a kick out of previous letters!).

If you've got tons and tons of money, I would recommend registering
the shareware programs you use, like PKZIP/PKUNZIP, DSZ, GT Power,
4DOS, AGT, Qmodem, LIST, Etc. THESE authors depend on your
support, I don't.

6. 2ZIP Minimum Requirements
6. 2ZIP Minimum Requirements

MS/PC DOS 3.1 or higher
256k of AVAILABLE RAM (2ZIP might work with less: I make no
guarantees)
Enough disk space to hold two copies of the archive being
processed, and all of the files it contains.

NOTE:

Versions of 2ZIP prior to 2.0 may create incomplete ZIP files if
sufficient disk space is not available. 2ZIP v2.0 and later will
detect disk space problems and will not remove any archives that
can't be fully processed. Any failed conversion will appear in the
2ZIP_BAD.LOG file, explained in depth below.

Son of NOTE:

Make sure you have a relatively large FILES= setting in your
CONFIG.SYS file. FILES=20 is probably good enough. Archive -> ZIP
convertors can take a lot of file handles because they create child
processes.

7. 2ZIP Installation
7. 2ZIP Installation

First, you must have a copy of each de-compression program you are
currently using on your system in one of your DOS search
directories. This is probably already the case, but if you want to
be extra sure 2ZIP will work in all cases (at least all cases it
was designed for), copy PKUNPAK.EXE (v3.61), PAK.EXE (v2.01),
ZOO.EXE (v2.01), DWC (v5.01), LHARC 1.13, and PKZIP.EXE (1.02) in
your DOS search directory. I'm using my \UTIL directory for this
purpose, but you could use any valid directory.

NOTE: If you are converting DWC archives, you MUST use DWC version
5.0 or greater!

If you currently use PKXARC (or some other unarchiving program),
you must rename or copy it to PKUNPAK.EXE for 2ZIP to work
correctly.






- 2 -


2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



Next, you should set up a WORK/LOG directory using the 2ZIP
environment variable. Place a line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file which
reads (for example):

SET 2ZIP=C:\UTIL

(or whatever you want your WORK/LOG directory to be). This
directory _must_ exist. If it doesn't, 2ZIP won't work correctly.

If you do not specify a 2ZIP work directory (and I recommend that
you do), 2ZIP will create a directory called "$KMS" in the current
directory and do all of it's stuff from there. This directory is
removed after 2ZIP finishes.

You may also want to set up a default compression variable using
the 2ZIP_C environment variable. Compression defaults to "-ex" you
may wish to change it to some other setting, for instance. To do
this, include a line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file which might read:

SET 2ZIP_C=-eb4 -ea2

Make sure not to enter blanks before or after the '=' sign (i.e.
SET 2ZIP_C = -eb4 is NOT correct). If you don't know what this
means, don't worry--2ZIP will work just fine if you don't set this
variable.

8. 2ZIP Usage
8. 2ZIP Usage

2ZIP is fairly easy to use (once you've performed the above
installation steps). To convert a single archive to the ZIP format
you would type:

2ZIP file.arc
2ZIP TEST.ARC (to convert TEST.ARC to TEST.ZIP)

Wildcards are allowed, so to convert all .ARCs to ZIP format:

2ZIP *.ARC

And multiple command-line files are allowed, so to convert all ARC
files, all PAK files, and FOO.ZOO you would type:

2ZIP *.ARC *.PAK FOO.ZOO











- 3 -


2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



Pretty straightforward, huh? While 2ZIP is processing you'll see
something like this:



2ZIP Many Archive to .ZIP conversion utility! Version 2.5
Copyright (c) 1989, Kelly Stanonik All Rights Reserved.

TEST1.ARC Un-archiving. ZIPing. Setting Date and Time. Done.
TEST3.ARC Un-archiving. ZIPing. Setting Date and Time. Done.
TEST5.PAK Un-PAKing. ZIPing. Setting Date and Time. Done.
TEST6.ZOO Un-ZOOing. ZIPing. Setting Date and Time. Done.
BOB.LZH Un-LHARCing. ZIPing. Setting Date and Time. Done.

Finished! 5 files converted.



Note that 2ZIP sets the date and time of the resulting .ZIP file to
the original date and time of the .ARC, .PAK, .MD, .DWC, .LZH or
.ZOO file. This should make you sysops out there happy.

2ZIP automatically selects PKZIP's highest compression ratio for
both ASCII and Binary files unless it is overridden with the 2ZIP_C
environment variable. This can result in a longer compression
time, but decompression will be faster and file sizes will be
smaller.

9. 2ZIP Batch File Usage
9. 2ZIP Batch File Usage

2ZIP can be used quite easily from a batch file. In addition to
the fact that the output from 2ZIP can be redirected using the
standard DOS ">" redirection symbol, it will also return a DOS
error level if a fatal error occurs.

If you specify the -b switch (described below), 2ZIP will set the
DOS error level if any conversion fails. Otherwise, 2ZIP will only
return an error level with fatal errors.
















- 4 -


2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



10. 2ZIP Switches
10. 2ZIP Switches

2ZIP supports the following switches (case IS significant).
Switches can be placed anywhere on the command line (i.e. 2ZIP -l
*.* _or_ 2ZIP *.* -l):



-b

Batch file support. This switch causes 2ZIP to set the DOS
errorlevel to 1 if any conversion specified fails. For instance,
take the following batch file:

2ZIP -b %1
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO ITWASBAD
GOTO ITWASOKAY
:ITWASBAD
ECHO You Lose!
GOTO END
:ITWASOKAY
ECHO Alright!
:END

If the -b parameter is not specified, 2ZIP will only return an
errorlevel if it encounters a fatal error (like not being able to
create the temporary directory).

-l

Full logging enabled. This switch causes 2ZIP to place a log entry
in the 2ZIP.LOG file (located in the directory pointed to by the
2ZIP environment variable) for each file it processes. Note that
the 2ZIP_BAD.LOG file will still be maintained regardless of the
status of the -l switch.



-z

Causes the contents of the COMMENT.TXT file (COMMENT.ZIP was used
in version 2.3, but I realized that this was a pretty dumb thing to
call a text file so I renamed it to .TXT. If you used comment
support in version 2.3 of 2ZIP, rename COMMENT.ZIP to COMMENT.TXT).
This file should be located in the directory pointed to by the 2ZIP
environment variable to be used as a ZIP comment for each file that
2ZIP processes. If you haven't set the 2ZIP environment variable
this file should be in the current directory.






- 5 -


2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



For instance, if you place the following line in your COMMENT.ZIP
file:

* A product of the KMS BBS! *

and 2ZIP a bunch of files (2ZIP C:\UPLOAD\*.* -z) with the zip
comment switch, 2ZIP will place "* A product of the KMS BBS! *" in
each file processed.

If you try to use the -z switch, and the COMMENT.TXT file doesn't
exist, 2ZIP will abort with a fatal error.

11. 2ZIP Error Log
11. 2ZIP Error Log

If, for some reason, 2ZIP is unable to create a .ZIP file, the word
"Error." will replace "Done." in 2ZIP's output, and a line will be
added to the 2ZIP_BAD.LOG file (located in whatever directory you
set the 2ZIP environment variable).

This log file contains the name of the original file and the target
.ZIP file, and the date and time of the attempt.

2ZIP uses a special directory notation which allows it to specify
when an error occurred in an archive within another archive. If
2ZIP encountered an error in an archive within an archive, the log
entry might look like this:

C:\UP\(THISARC.ARC)\FRED.ARC failed Sun Mar 05 00:21:37

This means that in the C:\UP directory, there is a file called
THISARC.ARC. _Within_ THISARC.ARC there is an archive called
FRED.ARC which 2ZIP had some trouble processing.

2ZIP does not delete the original file if an error occurs.

12. 2ZIP Bugs & Comments
12. 2ZIP Bugs & Comments

Kelly Stanonik (KMS) Bix: kms
4469 Ventura Canyon Ave. #E107 CompuServe: 74730,77
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423

Home: (818) 783-8013
Work: (213) 826-1000 x.412











- 6 -


2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



13. 2ZIP Versions
13. 2ZIP Versions

What program would be complete without a list of versions? A new
one perhaps? Well--I'd imagine so. 2ZIP is pretty new, but I've
already got a couple.

Version 1.1

This was the first release version of 2ZIP.

Version 1.2

2ZIP now converts .ARC files located within archives. Sorry, but
1.2 only converts one level deep (if you 2ZIP FRED.ARC, and
FRED.ARC contains BOB.ARC and SALLY.ARC, these files will be Zipped
too. If BOB.ARC contains SAMMY.ARC, though, SAMMY.ARC will remain
SAMMY.ARC).

I guess my personal opinion is that if someone puts eight levels of
archives within an archive they deserve to convert it themselves.
My mind may be changed if folks think multiple level archive
conversion would be useful.

Version 1.3

2ZIP now recognizes the 2ZIP_C environment variable to specify the
default PKZIP compression. If this variable doesn't exist, 2ZIP
defaults to "-eb4 -ea4" otherwise, YOU be the judge. A sample
setting might be

SET 2ZIP_C=-eb4

I've had pretty good luck with this, in fact. (This turns on full-
reducing compression for binary files, and uses shrinking
exclusively for ASCII files)

Version 2.0

This version turned out to be mainly a big beta test.

Version 2.1 (!)

This is a pretty hefty revision (hence the major number increase).
2ZIP has been ported to Microsoft C 5.1 from Microsoft QuickBASIC.
Error checking has been beefed up, two switches (-l and -z) have
been added, and the log file format has been expanded and enhanced.

Version 2.3

The -b paramter was added, along with DWC archive support. In
addition, 2ZIP was optimized a little, and some problems with
386^max were corrected.


- 7 -


2ZIP: .ARC/.LZH/.PAK/.ZOO to .ZIP Conversion Utility Version 2.5\89.12.08



If you're using version 0.92 of PKZIP, you'll probably want to set
the 2ZIP_C environment variable to -ex for maximum PKZIP
compression.

Version 2.5

This is the LHARC release (yeah, pretty late huh?). My main
problem with LHARC is that it likes to write not only to standard
output, but also to standard error. It's actually pretty easy to
redirect standard error, but if it weren't for 2ZIP I would
probably never have had to do it.

Also with this version I've dropped MDCD support. It appears to be
a dead compression format, and I don't see a good reason to clutter
2ZIP with support for it.

COMMENT.TXT is now used for a ZIP comment holder instead of
COMMENT.ZIP for clarity's sake.

Just a reminder: The current version of PKZIP is 1.02 -- if you
don't have it you should get it! It's a lot better than 0.?? (!)

The next (3.0 -- I'm working on it) release of 2ZIP will include
some dandy new features which YOU'VE requested. Keep requesting
them. My goal is to make your archive conversions painless.

- Kelly



























- 8 -